JIRA agile, multiple teams - one sprint

[Johan Holmer Lindell]

Hi,

We have a setup with multiple teams working from on product backlog that sits in one JIRA project. Each team has their own scrum board in JIRA, that shows all issues assigned to that team - this is done by setting component(or it could be a custom field).

When I start a sprint "Sprint 1" I would need to do that for each team/scrum board. All teams are working on the same iteration dates. Consequence of this will be that I have multiple sprints called "Sprint 1" with the same dates.

This creates problems when doing JQL searches for "Sprint 1", since each sprint is unique and has a different id. This means that can't do a summary of all ongoing work for "Sprint 1" and future Sprint 2, 3 etc. Of course I can hard-code all the identifiers after manual search, but it feels wrong.

I see some ways forward here:

- Either there should be a relation, so that JIRA understand that "Sprint 1" for Team A is the same global iteration as for Team B. Like a project sprint.

- OR that JQL queries should be smarter so they don't need the identifier, just that I search for "Sprint 1" and then it find all X number of sprints.

- OR that I'm using JIRA Agile in the wrong way when having multiple teams working from one backlog(=one project).

Any input?

Johan

[MICHEL TREMBLAY · Accepted solution]

Hi There, The latest Agile Version 6.3.2 is improving this.

It was a problem for us Also.

Now the future sprint is stored in the issues. So you can :

• Create an Issue that would be in every board sprint (Modify your boards filter to include that issue)
• Create a new sprint and add this issue to it. Do not start the sprint yet
• Browse your different boards and you will see the future sprint so you can plan each board.
• Start the sprint from any board when it's time.
• Repeat every at every sprint

That solution is working for us. need a bit of management and add 1 issue of bad data for report. But it work

Tell me if that's a solution for you.

Michel

[Johan Holmer Lindell]

Clever, yes it works.

But it feels like a work-around to fill in garbage issues to fool JIRA. This should come out of the box.

Atlassian???

[Tao Klerks]

Hi, interestingly, I just reported this new behaviour as a bug / design flaw. You can now, from a team-specific filtered board, kick off a sprint that (accidentally) includes work completely unrelated to the team. You are "committing" to work that you don't even see! This makes no sense. Even in a world where all teams are on a synchronized sprint cycle as you seem to be outlining above, it can never make sense to start a sprint from a limited/incomplete view of what is in that sprint!

I'm updating my old "how we do this" answer to reflect that the flow is broken at the moment: https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/88989/is-it-possible-to-work-with-multiple-scrum-teams-on-a-single-project-in-greenhopper-6

[Tao Klerks]

Our solution to this issue was pretty simple: Teams have names, and instead of "Sprint 1" and "Sprint 2", we have sprint names "A-Team 1", "A-Team 2", "Avengers 1", etc.

This helps account for the reality that different teams sometimes diverge in terms of sprint planning (your sprints might be synchronized right now, but can you guarantee that they always will be?) and ensures that different teams' reporting is easily identifiable.

Unfortunately, our flow was completely broken by the changes in 6.3.2 that Michel Tremblay makes reference to above. Now, when one team is kicking off, they might accidentally be including invisible issues (filtered out of their board, but still in the sprint that they are kicking off). I suspect that's what he was referring to when he said "need a bit of management and add 1 issue of bad data for report"

Is there any way in which simply having differently-named sprints for different teams wouldn't work for you?

[chuck barlage]

If you use one scrum board with teams by swimlanes, how would you do any reporting by team? Again, you can do some things by team, but not reporting. If reporting used quickfilters, that would help immensely.

[Boris Folgmann]

Try to use one Scrum Board and group by teams using Swimlanes instead. You can use Swimlanes based on filters with queries like component=TeamX.